Oil tanker hijacked off Somali coast

An oil tanker has been hijacked off the coast of Somalia, raising fears Somali pirates could be back in action after almost five years.

The Aris 13, a Comoros-flagged oil tanker belonging to a Greek company, disappeared off the coast of the east African nation on Monday, according to a spokesman for the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), based in Dubai.

The UKMTO spokesman confirmed to CNN that the ship's last known position was off the coast, near a town called Alula (Caluula).

"The vessel has been hijacked," he said. "It has been taken against its will to another location," he said.

But he said it was too early to say that the ship had been taken by pirates, and that there had so far been no request for a ransom.

Warship on the way

The Aris 13 is used to refuel ships in port. It was traveling from Djibouti, Somalia's northern neighbor, to the Somali capital Mogadishu when it was hijacked.

Sri Lanka's director general of merchant shipping, Ajith Seneviratne, said the vessel was registered in Colombo until January 21, 2016, before it switched to the East African island nation of the Comoros.

At the time of registration, Seneviratne said eight crew members from Sri Lanka were listed as crew members. It is not known whether there were crew members from other nations on board the tanker at the time it disappeared.

Piracy off Somalia's coast used to cost the world's shipping industry billions of dollars and was seen as a major threat. Butinternational effortsover the past few years to patrol near the countryseemed to have paid off.

The last major attack on a commercial ship by Somali pirates was in 2012, when the MV Smyrni, with a crew of 26 and carrying 135,000 tons of crude oil, was held in a pirate anchorage off the Somali coast for 10 months before being released after an undisclosed ransom was paid.